Three - Mina
Three
Mina
???
I followed Sam through the kitchen door of the Wrison home. Eliza stood at the counter, slicing a loaf of brown bread. She transferred the slices to a tray, looked up, and smiled. I couldn’t help but mirror her expression. Eliza could coax a smile from a statue. It was as if she radiated happiness, the emotion strong enough to infect everyone in her vicinity.
“Fill the bowls with stew, Sam. Mina, would you please put the butter on the table with the bread?”
Though all three of the Wrisons knew my identity, they respected my desire to be treated as Eliza’s niece in truth. I had asked them to behave like I was any other villager, even when we were in private. Eliza occasionally struggled to order me around like she did her own son, but she tried not to let my rank influence her actions.
“Of course.” I picked up the crock of butter and the tray of thick-sliced bread and brought them out to the table in the next room. Sam followed a moment later with two steaming bowls of stew. I arranged everything on the table and lit the candles while Sam returned to the kitchen for the other two bowls.
Alan was wrong; the Wrisons used a simple pewter candelabra at their supper table .
Thoughts of Alan, and Sam's dismissal of the other man’s talents, plagued me. Nothing added up. Another inconsistency occurred to me and when Sam came back with the other bowls, and I forgot my decision to let the topic drop.
“Sam, where did Smith Powell go? Alan said he’ll be gone for a few days, but that seems odd in a village this size.” I had gotten the impression from the way Alan spoke of it that Powell being gone wasn’t rare.
Sam wasn’t the one who answered me. “It is unusual.”
I spun around, not having realized Conrad had come in. He stood in the doorway leading from the dining room to the front of the house, a dark shadow limned in light. He took a step into the room, and the candlelight revealed his features, but he remained more shadow than man. Brown skin, black hair, brown eyes—the only part of him that reflected the light was the whites of his eyes. Combined with his height, the darkness made Magistrate Wrison an intimidating figure. Then he sat down, and the candles revealed him to be simply a man whose serious expression couldn’t hide the hint of humor that always lurked in his eyes.
I hadn’t heard Conrad joke, but his eyes told me I would before the end of my stay in Skorsa.
“Most villagers stay close to home. When anyone needs anything from the city, they ask Patrick Kiels to get it for them. Master Powell always travels to Haiwella himself, though.”
“He goes every few weeks,” Sam added. “He lived in the city before marrying Mistress Smythson.”
“It’s neglectful.” Conrad shook his head. “If he didn’t want to stay in Skorsa, he shouldn’t have taken on the responsibility of the forge. A craftsman should never abandon the people who depend on him. The council nearly lost patience with him when he up and disappeared last harvest.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“A handful of farmers forgot to check their tools early. They realized they needed new scythe blades after Gerald left for Haiwella. Obviously, the blame isn’t all the smith’s; the farmers should have known well before harvest if their scythes needed replacing. But there are always tools needed urgently at harvest time. Luckily, young Alan found a few blades pre-made in a storeroom. The farmers only lost a few days’ work.”
Again, something about the village smiths didn’t add up. “It took Alan days to find the blades? Why so long?”
Conrad and Sam both fell silent. Finally, as Eliza brought a jar of marmalade to the table and sat down, Sam shrugged. “I guess he forgot to look straight away.”
“Who forgot to look for what?” Eliza asked her son.
“Alan forgot to search for the scythe blades last harvest.”
“Nonsense. When Lewis and the others announced they needed new scythes, Alan told them he’d have them ready in another day. He didn’t forget to search.”
My eyes narrowed. “‘He’d have them ready.’ So, Alan made them. He didn’t find them.”
Eliza frowned. “No. They were already made. He needed time to dig them up, maybe sharpen them, I suppose.”
The men nodded.
I looked at each of their faces, my confusion growing by the minute. “He needed more than a day to find them?”
“I’m sure he had to sort through things before he found the correct pieces. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear Gerald isn’t the most organized.”
Sort through what? I had seen the almost bare shelves in the shop. A village like Skorsa didn’t stockpile such things; they were made to order. Maybe the smith had made a few scythe blades before his trip, in anticipation of farmers needing the tools, but what else would Alan have needed to sort through?
I lowered my spoon. “Does a village smith normally have piles of pre-made tools just lying around?”
“No,” Conrad said slowly, “he does not. ”
I picked at the slice of bread I had taken. “Doesn’t it make more sense that Alan used those two days to make the pieces the farmers needed?”
“He doesn’t have the skill,” Sam said.
His father looked thoughtful. “How do we know he doesn’t have the skill?”
All three Wrisons had matching furrows in their brows.
“He just . . . he never . . .” Sam took a deep breath. “We all know he doesn’t.”
“We do. I did.” Conrad shook his head. “Now, I’m not so certain.”
“He showed promise before his father’s death,” Eliza said softly. “That’s why it was so disappointing to learn he lacks any skill.”
“I think,” Conrad said after another moment, “I might pay Alan a visit in the next few days.”
I finally ate a spoonful of stew. Conrad's sudden wariness didn’t reassure me. It shouldn’t have taken my questions to make him realize something odd was going on with Skorsa’s smiths. He never formed an opinion until he understood every facet of the situation. Yet he had never even thought to question his assumptions about Alan.
Two days before I could pick up my necklace. Two days before I discovered if I had been duped or if the entire Wrison family had made a mistake.
???
It felt like an eternity, but the two days finally passed and I returned to the smithy. The small shop was empty, but I heard pounding from the forge. It gave me hope that I had judged Alan correctly, while making me wonder even more about the Wrisons’ opinions of him. I went to the door along the side wall and eased it open.
Heat washed over me, eclipsing even the natural heat of summer. The muffled pounding transformed into the clang of metal on metal now that no barriers stood between me and the source of the sound. Alan stood at an anvil in the center of the space, hammering a rod of iron with measured strokes. Slowly, the straight length of metal took on a graceful curve. After a few more blows, he set the piece back among the coals to reheat and saw me.
“Miss Devale.” He dropped his tongs onto a workbench and walked over to the door.
“Master Smythson.” I stepped back into the relatively cool shop. “I hope I haven’t come at a bad time?”
Alan skirted past me and went directly to the cabinet along the back wall. “Now is fine.”
He wiped soot-covered hands on his leather apron, then reached up to the same spot behind the decorative finial. He pulled down a gold chain and pendant, smoothed the necklace out along his palm, and brought it over to me.
I stared so long that Alan began to shift his weight from foot to foot.
I reached out and traced the fall of the chain. As he had suggested, Alan had made two chains of each type of gold, entwining them around each other. They linked together at irregular intervals. There were more twists and styles of links than I remembered from the copper chain. My finger continued its journey down to the pendant, which dangled beneath Alan’s palm. I hooked the kite-shaped pendant and pulled the necklace away.
A sapphire peeked out of the gold at each corner of the pendant, which Alan had made from a marbled combination of both gold and rose gold. It hinted at the style of the original necklace, while appearing even more seamless. Delicate and refined, the necklace proved its maker’s mastery as a smith.
Why did the Wrisons doubt his skill? Even if they had never had a reason to see him fashion jewelry, that level of craftsmanship must shine through on all he did.
“It’s gorgeous.” I tore my gaze away from the necklace and met Alan’s walnut-brown eyes. I didn’t want him to doubt my sincerity for a moment. He was so tense. “You surpassed my wildest hopes. I wish I could keep it for myself.”
He relaxed enough to smile, the slightest tilt of his lips.
I wanted to see that smile grow. I wanted him to meet my eyes while he grinned. So, I kept talking. “You are an amazing smith.”
Suddenly he was even tenser than before, the smile gone as if it had never existed. “The rest of the gold is in the forge. I’ll go get it for you.”
“No need,” I said, trying to figure out what had caused the change in Alan’s demeanor. I wrapped the necklace in a clean handkerchief. “You can keep the rest of the gold as your payment.”
Alan shook his head, still not quite meeting my eyes. “The chain and pendant barely used up any of the gold. There’s far too much left for an appropriate payment.”
I waved the wrapped-up necklace at him. “Do you have any idea how much a goldsmith would charge for this necklace in Haiwella? Keep the gold.”
“We’re not in Haiwella.”
“Listen, I’m not taking the gold. I meant to gift it to Aunt Eliza, and now I have an even better gift out of it. You made that gift, so you earned whatever remains. Besides, even if it is too much, which I do not concede to be the case, it would still be worth it to see what you can make now that you have the materials. Your talents are wasted on blacksmithing.”
Alan crossed his arms, hunching his shoulders.
Staring at his smudged shirt where it bunched up, I tried to decide what part of my comment had made him curl in on himself like that. I probably sounded like a spoiled city girl, dismissive of anything—and anyone—from the country. Taking a deep breath, I softened my tone. “You ought to become a jeweler. Courtiers would flock to your store in no time in the city.”
Alan ignored everything I had said. “I can’t accept that much as payment. Let me go get the gold. ”
My words clearly would not convince him. I waited until the shadows from the forge swallowed his muscular form, then walked out of the shop. I couldn’t help but glance back, but I didn’t let myself slow. As surprisingly diffident as Alan had been, I wouldn’t put it past him to chase me down with that gold.
He confused me. With a hammer in hand, Alan had looked competent and confident. When we had spoken the other day, he hadn’t hesitated to give his opinion on how to design the necklace. Yet he tried to run away when given a compliment. He refused to accept a fair payment for his work.
Once I reached the center of the village, I unfolded the handkerchief and inspected the necklace once more. Under the bright light of the sun, it looked even better than it had in the gloomy shop. Absently, I wiped a tiny smear of soot from the chain.
I had gone to the forge today hoping to find answers. I had one answer: Alan was more than competent. But I now had even more questions about Skorsa’s smiths.
A talented journeyman—who by rights should have his master status—who couldn’t accept praise. A stepfather who settled himself into a tiny village with surprising ease. And normally smart, discerning neighbors who noticed nothing out of the ordinary.
I had come to Skorsa this summer with the goal of experiencing life without my title getting in the way. But I had a new focus. Before I returned home, I wanted to solve this mystery.